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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28351887">We'll Have To Muddle Through</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall'>misreall</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Stories From the Bookstore Basement, Or : Flitcraft's [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>2020, Christmas, Christmas Carols, Coronavirus, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, Retail, vampire</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:01:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,025</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28351887</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Kay works at the bookstore during the holidays of 2020</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adam (Only Lovers Left Alive)/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Stories From the Bookstore Basement, Or : Flitcraft's [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683517</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>64</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>We'll Have To Muddle Through</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Adam knew that Kay had reached her breaking point when he heard her being what </span>
  <em>
    <span>she</span>
  </em>
  <span> would call snippy, and</span>
  <em>
    <span> he</span>
  </em>
  <span> would call completely reasonable, with a customer.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man had come in to buy a book for his wife for Christmas.  When Kay asked what she liked to read he said he had no idea.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kay nodded tensely, her chin jutting high which signified annoyance as much as she ever allowed herself.  Adam had never worked in the store before the Covid Holiday Season, because, as Earl had put it, he and customer service was as good of an idea as a bacon and asbestos omelet and probably as deadly.  But this year they needed someone to work the nights as they got closer to Christmas watching the line outside and making certain everyone inside stayed masked and socially distanced.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adam loved it.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was a natural.  His eyes alone were enough to subdue the most idiotic ratlicker.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In fact, for the first time in a very long time, he regretted he couldn’t be upstairs during daylight since he would happily have enforced those specific rules all day long, even if rules in general weren’t his thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He also enjoyed watching Kay work.  Well, he’d been watching her work for years through his cameras but in the flesh was better.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Holidays agreed with her.  With her wearing her little seasonal outfits - Kay owned a truly bizarre number of Christmas sweaters, each with a matching skirt, mask, and other accessories, though nothing glittery or with blinking lights - her golden hair gleaming under the multicoloured lights she had strung everywhere in the store, she was so fucking adorable Adam started wearing extra long shirts to hide his constant erection.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though that scared the customers, too, so he stopped giving a shit if they caught an eyeful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every night, after all day of dealing with too many people wanting to be in the store, and too many phone calls, and too many computer orders, Kay remained professional and actually fucking merry.  Adam had grown up in Merrie Old England and even there he had never seen anyone actually merry before.  That she would actually collapse in his bed afterward, barely letting him make sure she was fed before sleeping was the only evidence he had that she was human those days.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was like his lover had turned into a character from a Christmas song, or a terrible Holiday movie, for the season.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was also too tired to make love, which contributed to his hard-on situation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love Christmas!” she had told him the year before to no surprise on his part.  The decorations, the music, the food, the outfit opportunities, they all were very Kay.  As was that it was the only time she got along with her terrible mother.  They would bond for a few weeks over having to figure out how to feed and gift the variously neurodivergent men in the family, the truce lasting until about Epiphany.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most importantly, Kay loved that at Christmas time so many of the people who went to a bookstore were desperate.  They were the court of last resort for gift giving.  It meant that for those few weeks, once all of the bestsellers were sold out, the WWII books everyone bought for their uncle/grandfather/dad were picked over, and the cookbook that everyone had to have was even sold out at Amazon, she could get people to buy just about anything, and finally getting the good, deserving, and unjustly neglected books out the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Watching the year before through his monitors as she did a victory lap to the coffeemaker every time she talked a grandmother around on a graphic novel, or put a copy of Jane Gardam, or Ben McIntyre, or Albert Murray, or Tomihiko Morimi, or NK Jemisin - not that she really needed the help, or Kat Cho, or Vikram Seth, or John M. Barry, or Bebe Moore Campbell, or Mel Gordon, or any of the other authors she felt were underloved into the hands of anyone really had, if possible, made him fall in love with her even more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For her, it was worth the stress, the extra work, and the rude(r) and more than typically difficult customers for those opportunities.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>God, would that she and Eve could have sat down to talk books just once.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though if he’d had Eve, he wouldn’t have had Kay, and those were the thoughts that even Adam, who loved to overthink anything that would make him more unhappy, would push out of his head as quickly as he could.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This year was different even if only he, and maybe Earl, could see it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That merry smile was brittle.  Kay was brittle.  Keeping the store profitable now took five times as much work for less money.  Customers on the phone took much longer to deal with than those in person, online order even more so.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was exhausted and refused to admit it.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m always worn out at Christmas,” she had told him the night before, slapping his chest in a playful, un-Kay-like move, before almost stumbling at the top of the stairs to his lair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That had taken a few decades off of his life.  He had even fucking begged her to take a day off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had shaken her head, “No, that’s not possible.”  And because of his light weakness he couldn’t stop her from getting up and going to work while he lay all but dormant after the sun rose. “Tomorrow is the day before Christmas Eve.  I would never be that irresponsible.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, she wouldn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now, dealing with this relatively inoffensive version of a typical, mediocre white man, Adam could see Kay was holding on to her professionalism by her red and green painted fingernails.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It started with him giving the same - to Adam - utterly amazing answer that people gave over and over again about the people they were buying a gift for.  They had no idea what they liked to read.  And when she asked them the next question, “What do they like in general then?  Are they into politics, or do they have a hobby, or maybe a sport?” the almost inevitable answer was little more than a shrug or a vague, “Um, they like plants,” or something like that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adam felt Flitcraft’s venerable wooden floorboards creak beneath his boots as he turned on his toes away from the line of people at the door, sensing Kay was about to have a conniption.  Behind the register, Earl pointed to the credit card machine and frowned under the Santa hat that he wore every day the last week before the holiday, though he was never very happy about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You gonna check on that?”  he asked Adam, who lied with a nod.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adam didn’t plan to stop her, but he did want to watch.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>God forbid she should recommend a gift card, Kay thought, as she looked at the perfectly pleasant, useless person in front of her.  It happened to be a man, but she had dealt with nearly as many pleasant, useless women.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This year Covid had made everyone a bit rougher around the edges mentally, but this was not a Covid thing.  This was an Every Single Christmas thing.  Person after person coming in to buy the most intimate, the most tender, the most loving, the most</span>
  <em>
    <span> specific</span>
  </em>
  <span> gift possible, a book, without the slightest clue as to what the loved one they were buying for might want to put into their head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He blinked at her above his rather cute buffalo plaid mask, waiting for her to pick his wife’s Christmas book for him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A gift card would be impersonal, he would say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As opposed to a book picked by a stranger, she thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Does she read fiction or nonfiction?” she ground out in her most genial voice, hating the question.  As if nonfiction were a </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  Everything that wasn’t fiction was nonfiction, she had to tell at least five people a day.  It was a college town, why didn’t people know that?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was vaguely aware that normally none of this bothered her.  It bothered Earl, but she was more sympathetic to the simplifications people’s minds liked.  But now, today, it was making her crazy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After ten minutes in which she could have been helping anyone else she finally managed to pry free from him that he knew a little bit of what his own wife liked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fiction,” he said.  Then he mentioned at least three writers that he knew she liked to read.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So did we not have anything from them?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>God, how rude, she thought to herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He scratched the back of his head in a decidedly aw, shucks way, and said, “Well, I read non-fiction so I’m not sure how things work over in fiction.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He said it in that vaguely dismissive way that those who exclusively read ‘nonfiction’ always used when discussing the obviously vastly inferior world of the imagination.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kay was fairly certain she had a very minor stroke at that moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It works by the alphabet,” she said.  A bit loudly.  “The same way everything else works.”  Yes, her voice was getting louder, but she couldn’t seem to stop it.  “How would it work, otherwise?  By color?  Does your wife like blue books, or is she more of a purple book person?  Violet is very, very big this year.”  She tried to stop and failed.  “Or maybe fuschia. Can I show you the fuschia books, sir?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As she spoke, Kay could see his face flushing, turning nearly as red as the red in the plaid of his mask.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She cut him off.  “The funny thing about fuschia is that it doesn’t actually exist.  Pink spectrum colors don’t exist.  Or maybe they do, it depends on which scientific theory you follow.  But what does exist is the alphabet, which is exactly the same for Jane Austen as it is for David McCullough!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you think that’s funny?” he said, giving her a look that was meant to be intimidating.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That you assume fiction is somehow inferior to whatever it is you read and you don’t know what your own wife likes?  No, I don’t.”  Internally Kay was putting a hand over her own mouth, and begging herself to stop, but externally she just couldn’t anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was too much.  The twelve-hour days she could handle, or the usual Christmas madness, or the struggle to get people to understand that their nose was in fact part of their respiratory system, or the people who were trying to do all of their orders online and were unable to figure out which version of a book was a good, clean copy and which was a print on demand piece of garbage and then yelled at whatever poor bookseller fulfilled the order, or the guy who got mad about having to stand in line outside and started to mock their ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign and wanted to start a fight when he was told he was banned from the store, or even the fact that NOTHING was available because one of the two places in the entire country where all of the books were printed had been closed for months due to Covid and so the books flat out didn’t exist meaning that she couldn’t get people what they wanted which offended her professionalism and her desire for everyone to get exactly the right book for the holidays.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But she couldn’t handle all of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The customer's eyes narrowed and he started to take a step forward, probably not even thinking about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Six feet, fucker,” a flat, deep British voice said from behind her.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The customer looked over her shoulder, his angry eyes widening.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even though she couldn’t see him, Kay could feel Adam giving the custy his vampire eyes.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll complain to the manager.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She is the manager.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then I’ll complain to the owner.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kay half-turned to look at Adam and for the first time in what was too long, they shared a laugh. “Yeah, man,” he said, “you should do that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was hard for the man to keep a full six feet and still stomp away, but he managed it.  Kay was impressed despite herself.  She was also furious.  “I deal with these people all of the time. I could have handled that,” she said without turning around.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you shouldn’t have to, love.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can you come with me, please?” Kay hated that now she sounded snippy with Adam, and she was embarrassed that he had seen her lose it with a customer, but she couldn’t help herself.  She started to walk away without seeing if he would follow, calling out to Earl who was nodding patiently at the customer who was probably complaining about them to her, “Going off of the floor for five!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was her!” the customer said, pointed at Kay.  “And that guy!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I have a lot of very tired people working here,” Earl answered.  When the customer started to say something else, he repeated, “Very tired.  Now, what does your wife like to read?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kay barely made it into the tiny, coat filled breakroom, pulling off her mask before she started a laugh that immediately turned to tears when Adam crowded in behind her.  He wrapped her in his long, long arms and pulled her against his chest.  Though he was only room temperature it was vastly comforting.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Adam rocked her, making soft, crooning noises against her hair.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s alright, sweetheart.  You’re so tired, I know,” he murmured gently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hate it.  I love Christmas and this year I hate it.  I miss my family.  I miss my mom.  I don’t even </span>
  <em>
    <span>like </span>
  </em>
  <span>my mom.  I miss being able to really sell books.  I miss having a Christmas tr-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She stopped herself.  Adam had told her to start with that he didn’t want his basement halls bedecked, reasoning that she had decorated the store within an inch of its fucking life, including two trees in the windows, and now he felt like an asshole.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, he was an asshole.  Yet he wasn’t supposed to be one to Kay.  Ever. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry, I should have let you cover the basement in holly and fairy lights,” he said.  “I want you to feel at home there, so you should do what you do at home.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pushing back to look up at him, Kay shook her head, her eyes drying behind her droplet covered eyeglasses, “Oh no.  I couldn’t, I wouldn’t.  It is your home, and anyway it has a kind of … Dickensian quality, like Old Joe’s scavenger shop in A Christmas Carol.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Complete with your own, personal Scrooge, aye?” he asked with a bit of a laugh, pulling her back against him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are more like the Ghost of Christmas yet to come.  And I am getting snot on your shirt.  Do you know how to get mucus out of velvet?”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck my shirt,” he said, settling her closer for the two minutes they had left.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a few moments, Kay said, “Despite only being room temperature you are really very comforting.  I thought you should know.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On Christmas Eve the store closed early, early enough that Earl had told Adam not to bother coming up to work the line.  “By the time you get up here and get your tough and grumpy face on instead of your mopey and grumpy one, it’ll be time to close the store.  Also, we never get many people that last hour.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As ever, even in this worst of years, Christmas Eve ended up - with the help of donuts Kay picked up from the cute place with the plaid boxes and the bourbon Earl bought at the convenience store down the block - not as bad as feared.  Though just as exhausting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they escorted the last stragglers out, and Earl took the cash drawers to his office to count Kay thought she was going to lay down behind the counter for a nap before going all of the way down the stairs.  Even walking to the door to let out Bianca and her brother Dailen, who was working there for the season, was more than she thought she could do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry no Christmas hug,” Bianca said through her mistletoe patterned mask.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kay was only somewhat sorry.  Dailen, who looked down at his sister over his kente patterned mask as if he wondered how they could be related, seemed entirely not sorry.  “Thank you for the cookies, Kay,” he said, holding up the little bag of sweets she had made for each of the staff.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had bought them, rather than making them as she normally liked to do to relax.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was sad, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As Adam would say, thank fucking god Christmas was on a Friday and they were closing the store for the weekend.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she turned the lock, she could smell cigarette smoke from the office.  Earl smoked one cigarette every night during the holiday season during the nightly ordeal of checking the sale, “Go home, shit can wait ‘til Monday to be cleaned up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Earl always told her to go home.  As if he were secretly hoping she would go back to her apartment rather than to the basement.  “Good night!  Merry Christmas!” she called out, pushing open the secret door behind the bookcase that led to the stairs down.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grumbled something back to her.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was ok, he had written “Happy Holidays” next to the line on her check stub that showed her bonus, in green ink even, which was as close as Earl was capable of getting to a Christmas card.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was only a bit of soft light coming from below when she started down the stairs.  As quiet as it was she knew Adam wasn’t watching porn at least.  That he wasn’t playing or listening to music, or watching an old French film where everyone smoked too much and everyone was exceptionally beautiful despite their eye make-up choices, was a bit of a surprise.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the foot of the stairs, Kay stopped and blinked.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The main room of the basement glowed with candlelight.  So much candlelight.  A small, ancient chandelier from … somewhere had been raised to the ceiling and sent out golden light from three tapers, refracted by a number of astonishingly clean crystals.  Here and there throughout the room pillars were lit as well, so the room was warm and smelled of beeswax since of course, Adam would never buy candles made of anything else.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment her heart raced.  With terror.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Adam’s basement was a firetrap under the best of circumstances.  She was terrified of leaving an electric kettle on unattended, let alone what looked to be more than a dozen candles dotted here and there, in an appealing show of reckless endangerment and romance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then she saw it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had cleaned!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The dark tile floor was not only visible, it gleamed.  The sofa was free of books, old sheet music, and clothing stripped in the heat of the moment to never be recovered.  The coffee table had been emptied of garbage, polished, and had laid out on it a cheese tray, fruit, cookies, and a bottle of wine, as well as one of Adam’s special thermoses.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t get used to it,” he said, from where he stood next to the piano that he had wheeled out of where it was normally kept in the laundry room.  “Come Boxing Day everything goes back to the way it was.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked nervous.  His hair had been pulled back in an almost neat queue, and he wore a black silk shirt that had no stains or tears that she could see, and a pair of green velvet jeans from his rock star days.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They only had one cigarette burn on the right thigh, and Adam kept rubbing his hand nervously over it.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ad-”  Kay started to exclaim … something, but he motioned for her to sit.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Get some wine,” he said, his voice a little edgy.  “And some cheese.  I think that’s proper cheese.  I asked Solange where I could get proper cheese.  She suggested Montreal, but then said the place on Clark St. was ok, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kay sank gratefully onto the couch, kicking off her shoes and getting herself a snack.  With a smile, she took a big mouthful of pink wine as Adam sat down and started to play.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was all she could do to not spit Rosé everywhere.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is … is that ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’?” she asked, tentatively, quietly, as if she might scare the song away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” he said, not looking up from where he watched his big hands gracefully span the keys.  “Your mother said it’s one of your favorites.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You called mom?  You hate my mom!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s an asshole,” he said, and then whispered, “I don’t hate her nearly as much as I love you.  You needed a treat.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though she wanted to explain that her mother’s psychopathology was responsible Kay knew Adam knew that and he didn’t care, though he was perfectly sympathetic to her father’s condition.  At the moment even she was too taken with what he was doing to correct him.  There was nothing more sacred to Adam than music, nothing more incongruous than Adam playing Christmas carols, and nothing that Kay loved more about the season than Christmas music.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And nothing at all that she loved so much as Adam, which she told him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Looking up at her with a frown, “I’m not fucking singing any of this shit.”  Then, considering, he added, “But you can.”  So she did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He played “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” and “The Christmas Song,” and “O Holy Night,” and “White Christmas” and all of the other songs Kay loved the most, finishing with her favorite, “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Afterward, he poured himself a dram of blood, refusing to drink from her.  “Maybe on Sunday, you’re too tired, baby.”  When he was done blissing out, something Kay always loved to watch because of how beautiful and peaceful he looked in the throes, he sprawled on the couch, pulling her to nestle back between his legs, nuzzling the top of her head sweetly.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you for my present,” she said, turning to be kissed.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whenever Adam had drunk another’s blood he always kissed her very, very softly.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have something else for you.  Get another drink, first.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Refilling her wine, Kay looked at him curiously.  She had specifically told him not to buy her anything, since he already was paying for her everything.  Moving again, so they were tangled together comfortably, Adam looked into her eyes.  “There is an old tradition in England, well, old being fucking relative.  It’s not as old as I am.  It was a Victorian thing, telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve.  Typical, really.  Sublimating sex with fear, </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking</span>
  </em>
  <span> typical if you think about-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Adam?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right, sorry.  Anyway, you know I don’t believe in that stuff,” he waved a hand, “as you do.  But even I like a good ghost story.  Actually, I usually don’t.  But this story, this story was told to me by a friend many, many years ago, and he swore to me that it was true.  That he grew up in a haunted house in Cumbria.  I’ve been to Cumbria once and never went back, so I can tell you that the dead wouldn’t be caught there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that a joke?” Kay asked.  Sometimes she wasn’t sure, especially with Adam.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Er, yes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was very funny.  Go on please.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a half-smile, Adam stood and pinched out candle after candle, until the only light came from the three thin tapers burning above them.  As he moved around the room he spoke, his voice lowered even further, his words slow and deliberate, giving Kay a wondrous chill.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This story takes place at the beginning of the last century.  The events took place in a once-great, black-hearted house called Allerdale Hall, which used to sit upon a blood-red hillside that the locals called Crimson Peak…”</span>
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